Lord Addington: My Lords, does the Minister agree that anything that deals with children that cuts off at 16 would not be considered in the current environment and would not go with any of the Government thinking of the moment or of the recent past? Surely that should be changed.

Lord Dykes: My Lords, taking us back onto dry land, I wonder whether there is not a strong case for the Government to encourage the use of the European Union flag alongside the Union flag on more and more public buildings in Britain in order to increase the enthusiasm.

Public Sector Pensions

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, the blanket of an Answer which the noble Lord has given to his noble friend underrates the seriousness of the problem and also underrates the deserts of his noble friend, who deserves a much better Answer than he has had.

Baroness Noakes: My Lords, may I pursue the point made by my noble friend? The Minister gave figures as at March 2004—that is, £460 billion. Does he not agree that that figure is clearly out of date not only in terms of time but in terms of life expectancy assumptions and also in terms of the discount rate used in those calculations, which was wholly unrealistic for public sector liabilities? Does he not agree that the true figure is now well north of £700 billion?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, as I indicated, when the full set of pension scheme accounts are published, as at 31 March 2005—I think there is one set to go, which should be laid before Parliament by the statutory deadline of 31 January—these matters will be updated. In respect of those pension scheme accounts that have been laid, the notes to these accounts made it clear that FRS assumptions are being used, and that the discount rate from 1 April 2005 onwards would be 2.8 per cent. We act on the basis of best advice from the government actuary.

Lord Redesdale: My Lords, what urgency is now being given to moving forward the interconnector from the Norwegian gas fields to the north-east and why greater urgency has not been given to that in the past? Also, what progress is being made at Milford Haven to allow liquid gas from Qatar to be received?

Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, the Minister said that Europe has been alerted by the Russian/Ukraine dispute over gas prices. Is it not a fact that continental Europe is already almost 50 per cent reliant on Russian gas piped from Siberia? Indeed, some countries, such as Austria and Slovakia, are 90 or 100 per cent reliant, and the projection is that European dependency will go up to 80 per cent. Can the Minister assure us that when the new north-European pipeline, which will run between Russia and Germany with proposed branches off to the UK, is built, we will not drift into the same degree of reliance, and that instead we will develop our reliance on Norway and other sources, as has already been suggested? Maybe not on Qatar, where the other day we found that ships that were due to come here were diverted to America where there was a shortage of gas. Will the Minister convey the impression of less drift in energy policy that seems to come from the Government at present?

Viscount Simon: My Lords, I also added my name to the amendment. Currently, if someone on nine points exceeds the speed limit and receives an additional three points, he will be banned from driving for a period. If he knows that by exceeding the speed limit by only a certain amount, he will receive only two points, he will say, "I can do it". That is wrong.

The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I support Amendment No. 1 proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Viscount, Lord Simon. As has already been outlined, the amendment would keep the status quo for breaches of the 30 mph speed limit. The principle of variable penalties would remain in place, but the minimum penalty would be three points and a fine of £60, as at present.
	Research indicates that it is the prospect of the imposition of penalty points that best dissuades drivers from breaking the speed limit. It is in 30 mph areas where children and other pedestrians are most at risk. The chances of death double when impact speeds exceed 30 mph. Current government advertising shows the additional stopping distances required when speeds rise above 30 mph. The proposal that penalties might be lowered for speeding in 30 mph areas therefore runs counter to the message from those government adverts. No doubt the Government may be reluctant to curb variable penalties at all, even if such restriction applied to 30 mph areas alone. However, in the latter case, sticking to three penalty points for speeding offences is surely in the interest of all road users. After all we are all pedestrians, not least when we have parked the car.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. On behalf of the Government, I endorse from this Dispatch Box the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, about sending our condolences to those who suffered in the tragedy at Abergele in Wales at the weekend. As he has indicated, that issue is not germane directly to this debate, but it is the first occasion on which we can record our sorrow at that terrible occurrence.
	All noble Lords who have participated in the debate have again, with their customary force and eloquence, reiterated the arguments that we have had at previous stages. In resisting those arguments I do not want to say that the Government are categorically opposed to the thinking behind the views put forward—far from it. We recognise that they are put forward on the basis of seeking to enhance road safety as noble Lords see the position. But I want to emphasise a point that I have made previously. We are still in the consultation stage with regard to these issues. This does not have to be resolved by primary legislation. The scheme which will introduce any new framework of penalty points will be secondary legislation. We are still in the process of consultation.
	Today, noble Lords have put forward with great force one very significant viewpoint on those matters, but they will know that contrary viewpoints are being expressed. In fact, the issue of penalty points is being brought into some disregard because drivers may feel that for the most minor infringement they get exactly the same "hit" as drivers who have exceeded the speed limit by a considerable margin and have shown themselves to be much more careless about the safety of other road users than some. We are looking at whether the issue would be tackled better by an element of greater flexibility.
	Our mind is not made up on that point, which is why the representations made again today are important. All that I insist in rejecting the amendment, and I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw it, is for recognition that this is part of an ongoing debate which awaits resolution. There will be an opportunity for a final decision on the new penalty points' structure. We merely seek to preserve the openness of that debate and for the decision to be taken at the appropriate time. If the amendment were to be carried, the debate would be cut short and pre-empted by legislation which this Bill represents.
	So I emphasise to the noble Lord that I do not seek to contradict his arguments. I am arguing for the necessary flexibility on procedure that enables us to address this issue at the appropriate time and for the debate to continue, because there are many contrasting views on the matter. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment. But before asking him to do so, I will of course give way to my noble friend.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, it leaves quite a degree of flexibility, but not as much—about 33 1/3 less is my quick calculation—and it is that which I seek to defend.

Lord Bradshaw: My Lords, I hear what the noble Lord says and I hear that we will have the opportunity to come back to the issue. However, I would remind him that that flexibility can be influenced by a decision by the police to prosecute because the courts will have the option to impose a harsher penalty, rather than when someone has driven just over the limit. For example, if someone drives through a 30 mph limit at 45 mph, it may be decided that three penalty points is not enough and that the person should be prosecuted instead whereupon the courts may impose a stricter penalty. So there is flexibility in the current system. It just depends at what level the police decide that a penalty notice should become a prosecution. I ask the Minister to bear that in mind. In the mean time, having listened to what he said and in the knowledge that we shall return to this at some point, I withdraw the amendment.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken. However, as a probing amendment, this is a little late, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, indicated. That does not mean that we cannot take it seriously but this is the first time the issue has arisen in this respect.
	The proposal seems to ally the concept of the Rail Accident Investigation Branch with what happens on the roads. The same could be said of other modes of transport, such as marine transport. Marine and rail accidents are few and far between; they are very serious when they occur. Quite frequently there are technical lessons to be learnt from them, and human error is often of quite a low order.
	Everyone in the House, particularly those who have spoken in these debates and have a great knowledge of road safety issues, knows that there are a very large number of accidents. Last year there were 2,978 accidents involving a fatality. The numbers involved are of a very different order of magnitude from those involved in railway accidents. A very large number involve human error. Technical and mechanical failures are of a relatively low order in accidents, although lessons are learnt about the issues the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, described, such as accident black spots. Local authorities and local police are best placed to make judgments about those.
	Of course accidents are investigated very carefully by police forces. Wherever a fatality occurs, they are obliged to do so because they need to consider the possibility that charges may be brought against someone involved in the accident. Local authorities are apprised and aware of where accidents occur. The local community is very alert to accident black spots. In fact, it often identifies areas which are not black spots but which cause concern given the potential for accidents. We recognise that local authorities play a very significant role. The police carry out their investigations. As the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said, a range of resources is available to the authorities in examining the causes of accidents. In addition, our department carries out research into accidents and academic studies are made of them. We are not short of evidence in identifying factors which contribute to accidents.
	We all aspire to a situation in which safety on the roads is comparable to that of the railway, air or marine industries. We all recognise why that is a difficult objective. We are far from achieving it because of the very large number of people who drive on the roads and the human factor involved. We cannot draw easy comparisons between the undoubted effectiveness of the investigations into rail, marine and air accidents and say that this concept could be easily translated to the thousands of accidents which happen, regrettably, on British roads during the year.
	Although we do not see the need for the body the noble Lord has proposed, I assure him that we take very seriously the necessity for examination of and research into accidents and for the identification of factors which can increase road safety. There is always a great deal to be learnt from accidents. As we have indicated in this debate, those with direct responsibility—often local authorities rather than central government—take action to ensure that there is improvement at accident black spots. I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured and able to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Bradshaw: My Lords, I am sorry but I do not feel particularly reassured because the number of traffic police has been significantly run down and the investigations that they undertake into accidents, especially fatal accidents, are almost always done in discharging their duties as coroners' officers and rarely lead to a prosecution because the person has often killed themselves in the process. I find the reply rather complacent in view of the huge numbers of people killed on the roads. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Renton, that it was never my intention for this to become law. This is a probing amendment. However, I wish that the Government will set in train a mechanism for formalising more their approach to road accidents. The accident rate will not be reduced as we wish unless they do so. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: The amendment would improve road safety by reducing speed limits in rural areas. I remind the House that rural roads are the one category of road in which there has been no improvement in the accident rate. Amendment No. 3 would introduce the national default speed limit of 30 miles an hour in English villages. Ministers from the Prime Minister downwards have repeatedly said that 30 miles an hour should be the normal speed limit in villages. Indeed, in Committee—which was a long time ago now—the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, said that 30 miles an hour in villages was government policy. So I do not intend to argue the case for 30 mile an hour speed limits in built-up areas because the correlation between speed and accidents is well understood, as is their impact on the quality of life of particular communities.
	All urban communities have the security of knowing that their streets will be protected by a default 30 mph speed limit. So why on earth do we not give the same level of protection to rural residents who live in villages as a matter of course?
	Despite having argued that 30 miles an hour in villages is government policy, the Government unfortunately have no record of action to back that up. No target date was set for when 30 mile an hour limits should be achieved. There are no government data on how many villages in this country do or do not have speed limits. There have been no additional financial resources to make this policy a reality and there is nothing in local transport plan guidance about such speed limits.
	The Council for the Protection of Rural England has carried out a survey of English county councils to ascertain how far they were able to introduce such a policy. The results show that the introduction of individual 30 mile an hour speed limits on a case-by-case basis costs around £6,000 per time. It is therefore not surprising that demand is outstripping supply. Many councils have reported that they receive requests for speed limits on an almost weekly basis. Buckinghamshire has reported that it still has 100 villages with a default 60 mile an hour speed limit. Cambridgeshire believes that it will be 2027 before it reaches the end of its speed limit waiting list.
	Amendment No. 3 therefore seeks to facilitate what is already government policy. In this I wish to be helpful to the Government. The amendment does not remove the discretion of local communities to have a different speed limit if that is what seems appropriate. It would be a matter for them to move from a 30 mile an hour limit to something else. The change would be from the default of 60 miles an hour. For that reason, the amendment has the support of the National Association of Local Councils, which sees it as entirely beneficial. It also has the backing of 29 organisations which make up the Safer Streets Coalition. I beg to move.

Lord Hanningfield: My Lords, I totally support the principle of villages having a 30 mph and perhaps even a 20 mph speed limit in certain circumstances. However, I also believe that it is up to that village to decide what speed limits it wants. My own village is about two miles long—it is a small village but is long and stretched out with just a few houses—and has a 40 mph speed limit for each end of it and a 30 mph speed limit in the middle. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said that at the moment there is a 60 mph rule anyway, and that some local authorities still have a waiting list, but in the majority of counties where there are villages, there are already speed limits of one kind or other, designed by the local people.
	As with the last amendment, I believe that we have a habit in Parliament of wanting to create too much central direction all the time. I am trying as much as possible to move it back to local decision-making processes, and I believe that this issue is one that a village should decide for itself, without any change in the national law. Let villages decide what their speed limits should be—and I, being involved in a local authority, will do what I can to facilitate what villages want, as I know that police and other people do. As long as government supports what villages want, that is the best way in which to do it, rather than changing the law as it is.

Viscount Tenby: My Lords, I support the amendment. In previous discussions on the matter, the Minister took the view that councils should decide on it. I understand that he shares the objective. I do not want to traduce him; that is the last thing that I want to do, because he is conspicuously fair himself, but the fact of the matter is that if you allow such a laissez-faire approach, most of it will not get done at all. Just one or two councils, such as the efficient ones that we have in the east of England, will do something about it, but the majority of them will not.
	The fact is that villages are extremely vulnerable areas with indifferent lighting, appalling pavements and other traffic hazards; they are full of children, infirm people, animals and the elderly. That latter fact alone must surely commend itself to this House, above anything else. I ask noble Lords to support the amendment.

Earl Attlee: My Lords, I cannot support the amendment. First, I believe that local authorities can impose appropriate speed limits, but I was interested to hear what the noble Baroness said about the difficulties for local authorities in getting approval for those speed limits. The Minister needs to look at that.
	What happens if all or most of the houses in a village are on one side of the road? There is very little risk of pedestrians crossing the road. What happens if the road is a dual carriageway, with or without a service road? Default speed limits drafted in this way could have most peculiar results. For instance, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, cannot understand why people are so upset about 30 mph speed limits, but the main A15 road goes right through the edge of my local village and through several other villages. It has a 40 mph speed limit through those villages already; if it had to have a 30 mph speed limit, first, there would be a difficulty in compliance, because motorists would get rather fed up. We must be careful not to keep imposing unrealistic speed limits that are flouted by everyone. In addition, if it were necessary to have 30 mph speed limits in villages on trunk roads, we would have to start building more bypasses, because you would not be able to get around large pasts of the country—particularly the east of England, where I come from. So while I understand the problem to which the noble Baroness referred of getting approval for a speed limit, I cannot support a blanket speed limit.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: My Lords, I thank noble Lords who supported the amendment. I put on record that I am very disappointed by the lack of support both from the Conservative Benches and from the Government. We all agree that what we are aiming to achieve here is a 30 mph speed limit in most of our villages. Everyone accepts that there are villages where that is not suitable. We already have a default speed limit of 60 mph. There is a huge amount of statutory bureaucracy, and local authorities have to jump through a lot of hoops to give villages what they want and deserve—a 30 mph speed limit.
	Local authorities are getting more and more cash strapped. We have had a lot of debate in this House about the shortfall in funding that local government is reporting, yet we are asking local authorities to find extra money from their budgets to implement 30 mph speed limits which, as the Minister himself has said, is government policy. What I am asking now, and have asked repeatedly, is: if this is government policy, what are the Government actually doing about it? The Minister has come up with not one suggestion on how this measure can be made easier for local authorities and how the cost burden can be reduced. If the Government are serious about reducing speed limits in villages and introducing 30 mph limits, they could at least try to reduce the bureaucratic burden, even if they do not feel that they can support this amendment.
	I reiterate that this measure is not about reducing any element of local choice or discretion—that would remain the same—it would simply move the default speed limit from the current 60 mph to 30 mph. Clearly, I am not happy with what I have heard from the Minister and I wish to test the opinion of the House.

Lord Hanningfield: My Lords, I will speak to Amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 7, and will not move Amendment No. 8, which is also tabled in my name. Although I do not want completely to rehearse the debate that we had on Report, I want to repeat the serious concerns of many Members of your Lordships' House—concerns with both the important implications of the clause, and its late introduction to the Bill.
	As the House will recall, in response to concerns expressed on Report the Minister generously offered a meeting to further discuss the issue. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend. However, my noble and learned friend Lord Lyell, who spoke so eloquently against the relevant amendment on Report, was in attendance; he is here today. In the light of his extensive experience as both Attorney-General and Solicitor-General, I defer to his legal expertise on this matter, and accept his opinion that the meeting failed to allay those grave reservations that he expressed on Report. His was not the only voice of caution. As the Minister conceded on Report, on the whole the legal profession was not in favour—not without good reason.
	The clause means that a prison sentence can be imposed through pure accident and simple carelessness. Gaol is not a suitable punishment for an act of carelessness. The provision will result in the criminalisation of many ordinary members of society. Of vital importance is the absence of criminal intent necessary in the conviction of other crimes that carry similar custodial sentences. Careless driving is very different from dangerous driving and carelessness resulting from drink and drugs, even though the effects of careless and dangerous driving may be similar. According to the current wording, a person would be guilty of careless driving if their driving fell below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver. That is markedly different from the test of culpability pertaining to dangerous driving.
	In the determination of the offence of dangerous driving, a driver must be driving in such a way that it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way would be dangerous—in other words, a person is doing something that they know they should not be doing. There is no such requirement in this new offence of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving. Instead, according to the current wording, a person may commit the offence not only without intent, but without even realising the nature of such carelessness.
	We are not arguing for this new offence to be struck from the Bill. We are trying to ensure that the punishment fits the crime. Importantly, the punishment should reflect the standard of driving, not the consequences. The Minister admitted that much on Report when he stated:
	"It is certainly true that the standard of the driving must be the most important factor in judging culpability".—[Official Report, 22/11/05; col. 1544.]
	As my noble and learned friend Lord Lyell of Markyate, Justice and members of the legal profession have argued, the standard of careless driving is too low to generate liability for causing death. Furthermore, as responses to the Home Office consultation indicate, the automatic prison sentence will not necessarily provide the deterrent effect that is desired. As Greenwoods Solicitors noted in its response to the consultation,
	"the deterrence of the sentence will largely go unnoticed by the majority of drivers . . . From my experience the majority of motorists will not in any way associate themselves with the possibility that they might cause a fatal accident until such an accident happens".
	The offence of careless driving must focus on the standard of driving involved. As the Law Society of Scotland argued,
	"To punish more severely a driver for a fatality, which results from a minor error in driving because of the consequences of the driving, rather than the driving itself is difficult to justify in the criminal law. As this is a crime of negligence, there is insufficient guilty intention to justify a punishment of disproportionate consequences".
	A much more fitting punishment would perhaps be a more severe ban from driving. I remind the Minister that the Government's manifesto commits them to implementing tougher penalties for careless and inconsiderate driving, not excessive ones.
	As I said, this is a subject that would have benefited from the same detailed consideration enjoyed by other parts of the Bill. While we can and will support the creation of a new offence of careless and inconsiderate driving, we cannot and will not support the excessive punishment that the Government propose. The punishment must fit the crime. An obligatory custodial sentence is completely disproportionate to such an offence. Furthermore, it should be left to the courts to decide the severity of punishment and the actual offence committed, not to governments. I beg to move.

Lord Monson: My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment. It is now almost universally agreed that the law as it stands does not provide for adequate penalties for causing death by careless driving. The penalties need to be stiffened up with higher maximum fines, the possibility of imposing a community service order and, above all, automatic disqualification for a minimum period of 12 months. The disqualification period could be substantially longer.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, said, the sticking point is imprisonment. Is imprisonment really appropriate for an act of simple carelessness, however grave the consequences, where no element of recklessness is involved? After all, no human being can be expected to remain at a state of maximum alert hour after hour. It is a pity but that is a law of nature.
	It can be argued that train drivers who drive through a signal set at red, skippers of ships who carry out a slipshod manoeuvre, and hospital doctors and nurses who inject the wrong solution into a patient's vein, all resulting in death, are often charged with manslaughter, essentially for acts of carelessness, and, although frequently acquitted by juries, they are sometimes convicted. That is undeniably true but, in practice, such convictions rarely seem to result in actual sentences as distinct from suspended sentences of more than about 12 months. That is why I submit that if custody is to be an option—and it is a big "if"—then a two-year maximum is appropriate.
	There is a further important reason for this two-year maximum. As I argued at some length on Report, if a five-year maximum were put in place, the public and the increasingly vocal media would expect everyone convicted of this offence to be sent to prison as a matter of course, even if only for a year or two, and they would explode with rage and indignation if anyone were merely fined or given a community service order. A two-year maximum, on the other hand, would subliminally indicate that prison was reserved for the relatively few cases where the careless driving had bordered on reckless or dangerous.
	On Report, I proposed a somewhat higher—three-year—maximum in the hope that the Government might find that an acceptable compromise. However, alas, that was not to be. The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, indicated a willingness to compromise on the maximum at Third Reading, but so far the Government have not come up with a compromise amendment of their own.
	Since Report, I have been persuaded by the weight of judicial and other highly experienced legal opinion that imprisonment of any length should not be an option at all for this offence—hence the adding of my name to this amendment. However, if the majority of your Lordships are not persuaded by the force of this argument, my Amendment No. 6 remains as a fallback compromise option.

Viscount Simon: My Lords, my two amendments are intended to close a loophole in the existing legislation and are in addition to what has been discussed at previous stages of the Bill. I raised the matter at a previous stage when another noble Lord discussed his amendment.
	By failing to stop after a crash, an offender can escape or significantly reduce the consequences of his actions by evading police attention completely or for long enough to remove incriminating evidence such as alcohol consumption. There is already an offence under Section 170(4) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 of failing to stop after an accident. However, this is a summary offence carrying a maximum sentence of six months' imprisonment and with a six-month time limit for prosecutions to be started. It seems that a growing number of drivers are willing to ignore their legal obligation to stop after an accident to avoid a much harsher penalty, especially where they have been drinking prior to the crash.
	It seems to me that there are two possible approaches which could remove that six-month time limit. I seek to amend Section 3A to include the specific offence of failure to stop after an accident caused by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs. That would address the specific problem caused when a drinking driver flees the scene of a fatal crash, intending to deprive the police of valuable evidence.
	Alternatively, the Government may wish to consider amending Section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 to change its status from a summary offence to an offence triable either way, thus removing the six-month time limit for starting proceedings, and then to increase the maximum penalty to reflect the full range of penalties for Sections 1 to 6 of the Act—in other words, 14 years.
	There is precedent for such a move. Section 7 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 creates an offence of failing to provide a specimen for analysis or laboratory test in drink driving cases. Section 7 was inserted in the original Road Safety Act 1967 to penalise drivers who attempted to evade prosecution by failing to give a sample, and the penalties are exactly the same as for driving with excess alcohol.

Lord Lyell of Markyate: My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity to support noble Lords who seek to overturn the five-year—or indeed any—prison sentence being available for the punishment of careless driving in circumstances where death has been caused. It would be an enormous mistake if this House and Parliament were to pass this law. It is contrary to principle, as I shall briefly explain. There is a serious danger that it would cause injustice to a significant number of people if the Government's estimate of something like 150 prison places a year for people found guilty of causing death by careless driving were to turn out to be accurate.
	Alternatively, it will have the undesirable consequence that the judiciary—who are very widely opposed to this proposal; I know of no exception right up to the very highest level of the previous Lord Chief Justice, who was rightly consulted—will prevent it by imposing very few sentences of this nature. We shall then simply find the searchlight of criticism turning on the judiciary and seeking to second-guess what they who have heard and considered the cases have none the less decided to be right.
	Before I make my criticisms, I offer sincere thanks to the Minister and his colleague the junior Minister at the Home Office for their courtesy and definite willingness to explore this subject with us. I have had the benefit of attending two meetings, about which I shall say a word in a moment.
	The provision is contrary to principle. As noble Lords have rightly said, there is nowhere else in English law where we provide for a custodial sentence for something that does not go beyond negligence or carelessness. I see that in the footnotes there are references to the Proceeds of Crime Act, but that is so different from these circumstances that I do not qualify what I have said.
	The noble Lord, Lord Monson, raised the question of what can happen to doctors, or to those steering ships and so on, who are occasionally brought forward and unnecessarily charged with manslaughter. But the test for manslaughter is a heavy and high criminal standard. If it is thought right to charge with manslaughter, nobody seeks to take that off the statute book. It is very tragic when a doctor gives a wrong dose which leads to death, but the circumstances when that actually leads to a manslaughter case are very few and far between, and they involve gross negligence, which is quite different from what is involved in careless driving. If there were anything equivalent in driving, it would rightly produce a charge of causing death by dangerous driving. The penalties for that, as the House knows, are very high indeed—indeed, up to 14 years in aggravated circumstances.
	I briefly repeat what I said on Report. I am no softie when it comes to the penalties for dangerous driving which causes death. My predecessor—my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew—and I consistently brought cases before the Court of Appeal under our power to refer unduly lenient cases. In consequence, the level of sentence for causing death by dangerous driving was very substantially and rightly increased by the courts. It is the courts who should always decide on sentence.
	Why would the provision cause injustice? The main reason is that it will fail to maintain the distinction to which my noble friend Lord Hanningfield rightly drew attention between dangerous driving—driving that falls far below the standard to be expected of a normal and careful driver—and careless driving, which is driving that simply falls below that standard. Such driving is often described as "mere inadvertence". I am not sure that I particularly like the word "mere", because we must all try to drive carefully. However, every noble Lord will realise, as the noble Lord, Lord Monson, rightly said, that every so often, one's attention does lapse.
	I did a great many careless driving cases in my early days at the Bar. I became only too familiar with circumstances in which the driver had approached usually a T-junction or from a small side road, looked to the right, saw—according to evidence which was obviously absolutely sincere—that it was clear, looked to the left, looked to the right again, moved forward and hit the motorbike or the cyclist whom he had failed to see. The driver was not necessarily going fast. If he had been approaching in a thoroughly irresponsible and fast way, there would be a basis for a case of causing death by dangerous driving.
	My second point is how does the defendant defend himself against causing death by careless driving? With causing death by dangerous driving the prosecutor will spell out very carefully the essence of the dangerous driving and why it falls far below the standard. But if the driving simply falls below, are we going to invite prosecutors, the CPS, to carve up different portions of the case and invite the jury to look at this portion rather than that? That would change our court procedures very substantially and would be likely to lead to a great deal of muddle and unfairness to the defendant, who will not know exactly the case that he has to meet and who may be put off pleading guilty in a case where there obviously was careless driving in order to contest he knows not exactly what.
	Why is this being proposed? It is not as new as people think. The present Government have been in power for eight years and I recently read a report by the Director of Public Prosecutions that seemed to suggest that a lot of the issues were new during his term of office. I have great respect for him, but the issues are ones we dealt with 10, 15 or 20 years ago. There was worry then because people whose loved ones had sadly been killed felt that drivers got away far too lightly with a penalty for careless driving. There are answers to the proper way of dealing with this which I shall deal with in a moment.
	The proper way is for the CPS to be, as it usually is, extremely careful about the charging level. Nobody should go and say that the CPS should just broaden charging levels if it is unjust to do so, which is what the Bill would desire. It would leave the CPS effectively charging both dangerous and careless driving in all cases. After all, there is already the power to find careless driving in a death by dangerous driving case. There would be a vast spectrum.
	There are two great safeguards against miscarriages in British justice. The first is that we have an independent prosecution service which looks carefully at the right level to charge. The second is that the case goes before a jury which applies the standard of the ordinary man and the ordinary standards of the day and is one of the bulwarks of our liberties.
	The real answer to this, even if it is not a new answer, is good liaison between the prosecuting authorities, the police, witnesses and victims and their families. It is really explanation. This is very much like the problem of deaths in hospital. People do not necessarily want vengeance. I attended two meetings, one with the Minister and Fiona Mactaggart from the Home Office and one—which was held upstairs in Committee Room 3, I think—with victims' families, who were far less vengeful than they are sometimes thought to be. They were reasonable people, and I do not believe that they wanted to see a sacrificial injustice, which can never bring back the sadly lost member of their family.
	It is worth looking at who opposes this provision. One tends to say "the legal profession". The reason why we in the legal profession nearly all oppose it is that our lives are closely involved with it. The reasons are clearly stated in the pamphlet put out on the subject by Justice, the organisation of which so many lawyers and others are members. It is interesting to see that it is vigorously opposed by the Council of Circuit Judges. Circuit judges have enormous experience They try more cases of this type than anybody else. They explained the likely injustices if you ask for a prison sentence to be given for what is, as they described it, almost always in a careless driving case "mere inadvertence".
	The third group is very interesting. It is the justices' clerks. Justices' clerks, by definition, hear every careless driving case, and they would almost certainly hear every one in which death was involved. Their society goes so far to say, and it will have trawled its members on the subject, that it is unable to cite any careless driving case where a custodial sentence would have been appropriate.
	Let me turn to what Ministers in their very difficult task seek to do. A Home Office Minister was presented—and I have no doubt that the Minister saw the same documentation—with a small sheaf of cases which were supposed to indicate that somehow driving was of a standard which merited a custodial sentence, and that the sentence had been too lenient or the charging had been too low. I would caution very much against trying to draw things from summaries of cases as regards which one has neither seen the papers nor, as the courts have, seen and heard the witnesses and evaluated them. Perhaps arrogantly—but I hope not—I could just see on reading four or five of these, which the Minister was kind enough to show me, exactly how that view could be reached and exactly how somebody experienced in these driving cases could see that it was probably very different in fact. We have a system of a professional prosecution service and we have our independent courts. We must rely on them and not seek to go against them.
	Limited statistics are available on this. We know, and the Minister has kindly told us today, that there were some 2,970 fatalities on the roads last year. There were some 320, I think, convictions for causing death by dangerous driving—it may have been cases; so about 10 per cent involved charges of causing death by dangerous driving. A significant proportion of those charged were convicted and appropriate penalties were given. What we do not know—and I think that the Government will wish to find this out over coming years, whatever happens—is how many cases of careless driving were involved in those 2,900 fatalities. That would be interesting. I am not sure it would answer the question, but we would at least be better informed. At the moment we have very limited statistics on those particular matters.
	So, in summary, I believe that there are profound reasons of principle and justice why we should oppose a five-year or any custodial sentence. I think the noble Lord, Lord Monson, is absolutely right—and he has obviously thought about it very carefully—to oppose any custodial sentence and only to put in the other as a possibility. But the principle is that there should be no custodial sentence.
	I support the increased fine of up to £2,500. I think that that is quite right. I would be quite happy to think favourably on guidance which might lead to longer periods of disqualification in an occasional case. But, I very much hope that the House will not allow custodial sentences to go through in this case and will encourage better communication with victims, witnesses and families as the right solution.

Viscount Tenby: My Lords, I opposed the idea of a custodial sentence for offences of careless driving earlier in the Bill and I continue to oppose it. I do so with trepidation after the very learned words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, who has really said everything there is to say on this subject, and the powerful speech from my noble friend Lord Monson.
	Briefly, there are two strands. One is legal. If we go down that road, the consequences become dominant, rather than culpability, which overturns, everything that happens in the courts. To the list of honour expounded by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, I add the Magistrates' Association, which is also unhappy with the provision. There is a second strand: the practicality. Throughout the passage of the Bill, noble Lords have been saying how difficult it is to get a conviction before a jury on dangerous driving grounds. It is indeed difficult. How much more difficult will it be to get convictions on careless driving, where the incident is entirely accidental, although there will be some fault, such as tiredness? No jury will convict under those circumstances, because the jurors will all be thinking, "There, but for the grace of God, go I". Even on those practical grounds, it is a mistake. Also, my noble friend Lord Monson touched briefly on the fact that it will unduly raise the hopes of relatives and others affected that they will get what they regard as justice—people being put in the slammer for two or three years. In fact, that may not come to pass and great will be the anger when the defendant is acquitted.
	For all those reasons, and for the much more powerful reasons that have already been advanced this afternoon, I urge noble Lords to support the amendment.

Lord Berkeley: At Report, I supported the government amendment which introduced this new offence of causing death by careless driving, and I still do. In speaking to this amendment, I shall speak also to my Amendment No. 23 because, while supporting the Government, there is possibly a problem with the definition of the words "careless" and "dangerous", to which many noble Lords have alluded today and at Report stage. One of the problems is that application in the legal system is at odds with what one might call common parlance. The answer might be to try to set definitions on a more objective basis.
	Many people may say that they witness a dangerous driving situation on many days, but that is a long way from proving it in law where the standard of driving must fall far below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver. It should be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way would be dangerous, which is probably accepted. I was told in a Written Answer in December that, in practice, the number of convictions is fewer than 250, even though there are about 3,500 deaths on our roads each year. It seems difficult to believe that the remaining 3,000 plus deaths involve merely carelessness or that they are the fault of the victim, particularly as the Government acknowledge that speed is a factor in at least one-third of all accidents.
	As other noble Lords have said, the discrepancy arises because juries, possibly unconsciously, interpret the definition as meaning far below the standard of driving that they would normally expect rather than far below the standard of a competent and careful driver, which I suggest would be rather higher. That leads to the problem of proving the offence of dangerous driving, which means that probably in legal practice the term "careless" ends up being used to catch all of those offences which fall far short of the "far below" definition, including some of the examples that noble Lords have referred to today.
	When the Government proposed the new offence of causing death by careless driving, there was strong criticism of the suggestion that drivers could face up to five years in prison for a momentary lapse of attention, which I can understand. But possibly it would be resolved by having a better definition of the word "careless". The lack of it probably hampers the Government getting wider support for this effort to treat bad driving with the seriousness that it deserves.
	My Amendment No. 23, which of course I will not press, would make it a duty to drive safely and might help to put a more objective bottom line under existing bad driving offences so that the standard of driving must be safe to other road users. Of course, it would not affect existing wording in the Road Traffic Act 1988, as amended, which refers to standards of driving which fall below or far below what would be expected of a careful and competent driver. That would still be retained to distinguish the words "careless" and "dangerous". I hope that the proposed amendment is helpful. I look forward to hearing my noble friend's response.

Lord Lyell of Markyate: My Lords, would the Minister not agree that the difficulty with the example that he has been careful to give is that you would normally expect the Crown Prosecution Service to charge it as causing death by dangerous driving. He said that the example was at the upper end of careless driving, but it is really an example which has been mischarged.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 4) shall be agreed to?
	Their Lordships divided: Contents, 159; Not-Contents, 153

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, we return to a subject that we have debated on the two previous occasions when we have discussed the Bill; the use of mobile phones in motor vehicles. The words of the amendment that we are moving are different, but the argument is essentially the same. I will begin by restating what we have already said on each occasion that we have debated this issue; that these Benches recognise unequivocally that driving while holding a mobile phone to one's ear is a dangerous practice, and it is perfectly legitimate for that to be outlawed. However, we are equally convinced of the necessity of some sensible amendment to the clause to allow responsible drivers to use mobile phones in an urgent situation,
	"in circumstances where the vehicle has been made safe".
	I shall not endeavour to rehearse the details of previous debates, but shall simply list the essential purposes of the amendment. The clause would render the driver of a vehicle that is not moving, even if the engine is switched off, guilty of an offence if they use their mobile phone. That would result in a mandatory three-point endorsement on their driving licence. We remain unsatisfied with the Minister's earlier responses to the sensible amendment that we moved previously. He has had time since the previous occasion, and the resources, to consider a better form of words if he thought it appropriate to address what we perceive as a deficiency in the Bill. In his recent letter, for which we thank him, he sought to allay our fears about the concern that the driver could be penalised for using a hand-held mobile telephone to contact the emergency services. I am sure that your Lordships will be glad to know of the Minister's assurances that to make an emergency phone call to the police or ambulance service from the inside of a motor vehicle would be acceptable.
	I appreciate that point of clarification, but it does not address the reasonable concern that brought our amendment forward in the first place. That concern is on what type of call can be considered urgent. We cited in the past, for example, a senior social worker who was stuck in a traffic jam and was going to a crucial meeting to deal with a child protection case. We might add to that a mother who was due to pick up a child from school but was completely stuck with no means of letting the school know that they were not going to be there, leaving the child vulnerable. They could not then make those phone calls for fear of committing an offence. On Report, with reference to a previous form of words, the Minister argued:
	"The fact that a car is stationary need not mean that full attention does not have to be paid".
	Of course, if you are stationary in the middle of a traffic jam and your engine is running, you will have to pay full attention to what is going on. However, if you could move yourself to the side of the road, turn off the engine and make sure that the car is immobilised, what would be the harm in allowing someone to make a call for legitimate purposes?
	We have carefully considered the Minister's answers and have returned with this new form of words that stipulates what I have just suggested—that the vehicle must be "made safe", which means that it must be parked with the engine turned off before the use of a mobile phone is allowed. It is then incumbent on the driver to ensure not only that the vehicle is stationary and the engine switched off, but that it is in a safe place. The new wording would address the concerning scenario that the Minister described on Report, which was,
	"about the person who is in a jam and is just over the top of a bridge that unsights the traffic behind but is busy on the telephone and does not get away as quickly as he should and then is hit by a vehicle from behind, being stationary when he should not be".—[Official Report, 22/11/05; cols. 1594–95.]
	For Third Reading, we have endeavoured once again to find a more acceptable form of words that will satisfy the Minister's exacting standards but allow drivers who consider that they have an urgent matter that must be dealt with, and who take the decision to make a phone call, to stop somewhere safe in order to make it.
	During the passage of the Bill, I have sensed a great deal of support for this common-sense amendment. I only hope that the Minister will have given it a bit more consideration over Christmas and will agree to it. I look forward to his response, and beg to move.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, there is little that I can say on this subject that I have not already said at previous stages of the Bill. However, the amendment differs from my previous amendments in that I have taken away everything that the Minister could possibly object to, and have now left him with a totally free option as to what he would want to do with his pilot. It is simply giving powers to the department to introduce a pilot as and when it wishes to. There is no obligation whatever to have a pilot if it does not wish to, so I cannot see why this would not be a positive addition to the Bill. It might prove enormously useful.
	It is terribly difficult to establish what is right or wrong. We know that young drivers have these high figures of dangerous driving. We also know that it is not only young people, it is new drivers. They might be older drivers. They might feel insecure when they go out. None of us knows the specific statistics, however, because the answer is always that there has never been any real assessment or pilot. If the day came when we really wanted to make an assessment, we should have the opportunity to have a pilot. I really cannot see what the Minister could object to, but no doubt he will find something. I beg to move.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I take issue on a couple of points the Minister has raised. First, he said that he is out to enhance the standard of the test, so that people who pass will be better. My scheme would enable people to be tested to see whether they are better. How is the Minister planning to test whether the enhanced test is an improvement or not? Then he talked about all sorts of restrictions. My amendment does not put any restrictions anywhere on anything. As my noble friend Lord Swinfen said, this is an enabling amendment to allow the department, if it decides that there is anything to be gained by it, to have a way of assessing and testing through a pilot scheme. The Minister is telling me that nothing has been proven and that there is no real evidence, but what I am suggesting is a means of giving him the evidence for the future. That is the aim of this amendment.
	The final and, perhaps, most important point is that this is only an enabling provision. There is nothing to say that the department would have to introduce the system at all. I do not know that the Minister answered this point, although I believe he indicated that primary legislation would be required if we were to introduce a scheme other than in this Bill. If primary legislation is required, Heaven knows how many more years we will have to wait before we can make such an enabling provision. I would like the Minister to answer those points before I decide what to do with this amendment.

On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 14) shall be agreed to?
	*Their Lordships divided: Contents, 118; Not-Contents, 142

Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen: My Lords, this is not a new topic, so I shall not take long to move the amendment. However, new research has been reported about sleep disorders since we last debated them.
	The recent study found that about one in six British HGV drivers suffer from a form of sleep disorder requiring medical help. If left untreated it could lead to potentially fatal road accidents, according to experts. Sufferers can experience obstructions of their airway during sleep, resulting in fragmented rest and excessive daytime drowsiness. The Respironics study, which was featured on BBC1's "Real Story" just before Christmas, looked at more than 900 drivers in England and Wales. It was led by sleep scientist Melanie Marshall who said that sufferers
	"are more lethal than drink drivers".
	The Road Haulage Association denied that the problem was rife among HGV drivers in the UK, but the Royal College of Physicians said that:
	"Obstructive sleep apnoea, or OSA, is present in 1–4% of the population, mostly among middle-aged men.
	"During sleep, the airway from the mouth to the lungs collapses either completely or partially, causing oxygen to be lost from the blood, which in turn creates 'micro-arousals'.
	"'Sufferers are not physically aware of their awakenings', explained Ms Marshall, 'but they can have hundreds of these over a period which leads to fragmented sleep'."
	The findings of her research for Respironics could have serious implications for both the NHS and the road haulage industry. We know that crashes caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel account for around one-fifth of accidents on British motorways.
	The "Real Story" programme revealed that some truckers who suspect they may have the condition are too frightened to come forward because once a diagnosis is given their HGV licence is suspended until they have been treated. In this time they risk losing their jobs. In many parts of the country there are long waiting lists for treatment, while in others it is not funded, despite the necessary machines costing no more than £300.
	I think what I have said will show noble Lords that this is a serious issue, and I hope that my noble friend will consider that some action should be taken on the matter in the name of safety. I beg to move.

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I am very conscious of the time but I am also conscious that I may need to be a little bit longer than one would prefer at Third Reading.
	The House will recall that I tabled an amendment at Report to try to deal with the burgeoning cycle rickshaw—or pedicab—industry in London. The amendment differs from the one at Report in that it focuses on the need for highway enforcement powers rather than the setting up of a registration system. I have again been briefed by Westminster City Council on the issue and I understand that its concern is supported by Transport for London.
	As I set out at the previous stage, pedicabs are becoming increasingly popular. About 200 operate each day in the West End during the spring, summer and autumn. They obviously provide an exciting service for tourists but they also potentially pose a very serious road safety problem for pedestrians and other road users. This includes parking on the footway and the carriageway, obstructing both pedestrians and general traffic; parking in pedestrianised areas—particularly in areas around theatres, such as Covent Garden—causing dangerous obstructions around emergency escape routes; parking in bus lanes, forcing buses to swerve into the path of general traffic; and there have even been examples of pedicabs blocking the routes of ambulances.
	Yet despite these obvious problems there are currently no means by which a local authority or other highway authority including TfL can control pedicabs through the issue of penalty charge notices. Many pedicab riders exploit this immunity with a total disregard of the moving and stationary controls which apply to them as well as to other road users.
	The purpose of the amendment is not to introduce a system of registration, which was my line at Report. TfL has plans to introduce a full licensing regime for pedicabs as soon as possible, and I understand that it is about to start consulting. But a licensing regime on its own will not be able effectively to tackle the road safety problems associated with pedicabs.
	The amendment would give highways authorities the necessary powers to issue penalty charge notices for traffic contraventions, bringing such powers into line with those they have for all other classes of vehicles. Therefore, as soon as TfL's licensing regime came into force, the amendment would be of immediate use to councils inside and outside London.
	The proposal is being put forward in this Bill because a key issue is that any future Transport for London legislation which introduces a licensing regime cannot introduce the powers to issue penalty charge notices for traffic contraventions because a TfL Bill, as we discussed last time, cannot address issues that are of concern to both Transport for London and local authorities. It is one of the mish-mashes between the two administrations. The Bill presents an ideal opportunity to introduce a legislative framework for issuing PCNs to pedicab drivers as soon as the future licensing regime comes into force.
	At Report, the Government were unable to support the amendment because they felt they could not legislate for a registration scheme in advance of TfL's licensing regime proposals. I have also had sight of correspondence in December between Westminster City Council and the Department for Transport's Minister, Karen Buck, that again explains why support could not be given at the previous stage because of the proposed registration scheme. But with TfL's assurance that it fully intends to implement a full licensing regime as soon as it can, the amendment now focuses purely on the enforcement of highways regulations.
	While TfL cannot itself legislate for powers that would also apply to local authorities, we need to grasp this legislative opportunity to give authorities the powers they need. Without these provisions, any forthcoming licensing scheme could, in effect, prove completely useless in its attempts to increase standards and improve the conduct of pedicab drivers because of the difficulty of finding other legislation to introduce the PCN regime.
	The amendment has changed so that it can deal with the situation whereby the licensing system will be introduced by TfL and to pre-empt that by having the regulations for PCN and other highways legislation in place so they can be picked up at the same time. I beg to move.

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that really helpful reply. Within the course of this Bill, we have if nothing else raised the whole question of pedicabs and the necessity for some form of regulation. I understand that the organisation concerned which has been riveting title of Bugbugs—the name of the major fleet owner, which seems to be at the forefront—is not anti-regulation. It is clear that if there is going to be consultation it needs to be included. So Bugbugs is the name if somebody would like to take that up. It is unlikely that pedicabs will ever become a serious threat to the London taxi. So we need not detain ourselves on that for very long.
	I am also grateful to the Minister for her assurance. The reason for bringing the amendment forward was to get the necessary legislation in place, but as it will not require primary legislation, it could be introduced after the TfL legislation comes in. All in all, I am not unhappy with the Minister's reply and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Berkeley: the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, asked me to apologise on his behalf because he cannot be here, but he supports this amendment. This is another attempt at a different way to try to persuade the Government to bring forward regulations to make these "human transporters"—I do not particularly like the name, but Segway is the name of the manufacturer at the moment—legal somewhere, be it on a footpath, going slowly on a cycle track or a bit faster on the road where it will presumably operate like a powered bicycle. Some noble Lords tried one out in the car park earlier.
	I remind noble Lords that these transporters are already in use quite widely in Italian cities by the police for catching people. They are clearly effective there. One of the people who gave us a demonstration before Christmas sent me an e-mail this morning saying that he had been stopped by a police car in the middle of Hyde Park Corner going through Wellington Arch and told that he was riding a power-assisted vehicle illegally. He replied that the policeman was also driving his car illegally on a footpath or cycleway but I do not think that it did much good. It was actually harassment. Why is this man being harassed by the police just because there is no regulation? Why should he not use his vehicle? He is happy to comply with any regulations, but there are none. Therefore, I thought, "Let's put this amendment down and hope that within a year the Government will bring forth regulations".
	The key to the "encrypted keys" is that there can probably be three different maximum speeds which could be preset depending on whether you are on a footpath, cycleway or road. With that short introduction, I beg to move.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. We have discussed the issue of the Segway on previous occasions, and it seems that this amendment would be rather more facilitative than regulatory. But let me make the obvious points: such a vehicle would be regarded as a motor vehicle for the purposes of motor vehicle legislation, and the transporter would need to meet other statutory requirements, including type or single vehicle approval, insurance and so on, which are prerequisites for being licensed and registered for the roads. If it is suggested that such vehicles could be used on footpaths and cycle ways, we would need changes to primary legislation to permit these vehicles to have access to those areas.
	We would need to ensure that legislation that enabled that interesting means of transport to be used was generic and not specific. It is not the duty of government to promote one proprietary product; it is the duty of government to facilitate aids to transport that are safe in the appropriate circumstances. So we would need to be very careful that we were not putting forward legislation designed to facilitate one product—which the amendment does. The amendment is also very prescriptive, in obliging the Secretary of State to make regulations and to make them by a specific date; that is rather more sharply defined than much significant legislation that many Members of this House can readily recollect.
	I have had a ride on this vehicle, too, and enjoyed it hugely. I found it a good deal safer for my aged frame than I expected, and I got on and off safely without hitting anybody else. There is no doubt at all, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, indicated, that they are a good deal better than walking—but they raise significant issues for other road users. Therefore, it will be recognised that the Government believe that we should proceed cautiously on these matters. A great deal needs to be thought through, and we could not possibly accept an amendment which was so specific to one proprietary development, although we recognise the dangers of looking "stick in the mud" and not receptive to new technologies. It is important that we embrace new technologies when they advance our transport interests—but there is a real problem with regard to this particular device. I hope that my noble friend will recognise that he has given the subject a good airing and will withdraw the amendment.

Lord Swinfen: My Lords, the wearing rate of cycle helmets by boys may be only 11 per cent now but we should bear in mind that when the wearing of seat belts was made compulsory the relevant figure was a great deal less than 11 per cent. The measure started from a much lower base. In my view it is now unusual to see someone driving not wearing a seat belt. You have to start from somewhere. Don't tell me, as the Irish do, "Don't start from here"—we are here today and now, and this is where we have to start from.
	I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, with regard to children under 12 rather than those under 14. I know that at 14 children are becoming much more independent. I also appreciate what he and other noble Lords said about children not always obeying their parents or doing as they were told. I know that from my own personal experience as a child when I did not do as I was told, as a father and as a grandfather. Children grow up and learn from their mistakes but if you lay down the guidelines firmly, in my view as a non-lawyer you have some defence under the law. I realise that my amendment may not be perfect as regards the criminal responsibility of either the parent or the school, but I am not a lawyer and I hope that that could be tightened up and improved in another place—that is the whole point of the Bill passing from one House to another.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, said that she was not very happy with current headgear. However, subsection (1)(b) of my Amendment No. 25 would give the Secretary of State power to prescribe,
	"(by reference to shape, construction or any other quality) the descriptions of protective headgear to be worn by children".
	So I hope that I have covered that point.
	As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, some cycling organisations are split on the issue. Some want the wearing of headgear to be made compulsory whereas others do not. It is interesting to note that the racing organisations have now made the wearing of headgear compulsory for racing. Perhaps that is more dangerous than cycling gently down to the village for a bag of sweets at the local shop, but children race on their bikes on the roads as well as off them.
	I do not think that compulsion will stop cycling. There has been no reduction in the riding of ponies or horses since it became necessary for children to wear headgear while riding on the roads. I have already mentioned that seat belts are now much more likely to be worn than they were when compulsion was introduced in that regard.
	In view of the hour and the fact that it would be extremely unlikely that I would win a Division, I will not divide the House on the amendment tonight but will rely on colleagues in another place to take the matter forward. I am sure that it will not be dropped. In those circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Hannay of Chiswick: I, too, want to intervene briefly on this subject—not, however, in support of the opposition to the clause proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. The noble Lord has explained—and I am grateful to him—that it is not his object to prevent the accession of Bulgaria and Romania, and that is admirable. However, I find it slightly ironic that after several occasions on which the Benches opposite have taunted the Government with having caused a deterioration in Britain's relations with the countries of eastern and central Europe because of the negotiations over the budget, he should now be opposing a clause, the result of which if carried in this Committee would be to increase the damage to our relations with the central European states exponentially. However, I accept that the noble Lord is not proposing to go to that length.
	Although it is of course for the Minister to reply, I also say to the noble Lord that I do not see the problem of the acquis communautaire and whatever institutional arrangements may or may not be agreed between now and the accession of Bulgaria and Romania. Surely the situation is as it has always been with countries that join. They have to accept whatever has been decided by the European Union and has entered into force by the day on which they join. The acquis communautaire will have been shrunk by then and I hope very much that some of its more out-of-date parts will have been removed under the proposals that the Commission is now bringing forward. Then they will simply be lopped off the acquis communautaire, which Romania and Bulgaria have to apply on their accession.
	If, on the other hand—as equally I hope will be the case—something like the directive on services is introduced and made law in the European Union by the time Bulgaria and Romania join, then they will have to accept that. I happen to think that that is a very healthy state of affairs. It is of course what the Bulgarians and Romanians themselves have signed and ratified. So I do not see a problem and I do not think that the institutional arrangements—whether they are called the constitutional treaty or whatever—come in a different category. Those arrangements will either be law by the time they join, in which case the countries have to apply them, or they are not law, in which case they do not.
	I should like to take advantage of the opportunity to ask the Minister a couple of questions which arise out of this first clause in the sense that this is the clause that makes Bulgaria and Romania ratified members so far as we are concerned. My first question relates to the budgetary arrangements. I should like him to confirm that there will be no change to the ceilings agreed in Brussels before Christmas for all the categories of expenditure when Bulgaria and Romania join. Can he confirm that the same amount of ceiling will apply to two more countries, two of which—the two we are discussing tonight incidentally—are quite substantial agricultural countries? So basically there will be an effective compression on the sums available for agriculture in the existing 25-member European Union. That point seems to me to be frequently overlooked by those who say that absolutely no constraint is being put on agricultural spending in the existing European Union. But my belief—the Minister may confirm this—is that that is not the case and that there will be an effective compression.
	Secondly, will the Minister confirm, as I believe is the case, that the substantial sums of money which had been spent by the European Union in Bulgaria and Romania over the past 10 years or so since they threw off their communist dictatorship, are continuing to be spent today, and will continue to be spent up until the day they join, are ones in which Britain pays its full financing share and that they do not come under the abatement? Thanks to arrangements negotiated by the noble Lords and others on the Benches opposite in 1984, because these expenditures are on countries outside the European Union, we pay our full share, we have always done so and will continue to do so.
	If you understand that point, it casts in a slightly different light the change that the Prime Minster accepted in December—in my view, quite rightly. We had to continue paying our full financing share for structural fund spending in those countries. No genuinely intellectual or moral argument could justify Britain paying a smaller share than other member states for structural fund spending in the new member states, of which Bulgaria and Romania will be two. If the Minister could reply to those two points, I should be very grateful. Meanwhile, I finish by saying that I do not favour the proposed opposition to the clause.

Lord Biffen: My noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford was right to move his amendment, purely for the technical reason that it enables the debate to now proceed. He made it quite clear that it was not intended to challenge the decision to welcome the accession of Romania and Bulgaria. I find it quite extraordinary that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, should find it so convoluted that he could not understand the simplicity and, dare I say it, the innocence of my noble friend's proposal. I am glad that it enabled him to raise the question of the acquis. I think that it is a massive imposition; doubtless not quite as horrific as the 90,000-odd pages would suggest, which is none the less a standing invitation for slim-lining. But I do not want to take up that point. I want to take up a point which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay: the finances implied in the expansion of the European Union. That would fall well within the terms of reference of the stand part debate.
	When the House of Lords Select Committee considered the financing of the common agricultural policy, they remarked:
	"The majority of our witnesses were clear that the cost of direct payments and other CAP support measures to Romania and Bulgaria is not covered by the Commission's current budget proposals".
	The Government responded to that by saying:
	"The Government believes that the Brussels ceilings are sufficient to accommodate the accession of Bulgaria and Romania without the need for further increases".
	I am certain that the Government response was given in good faith and I do not challenge it for one moment. However, we are entitled to ask what further consideration has been given to the whole financing of the European Union, and more particularly the common agricultural policy, in light of the events of the past few months. I ask that not in any confrontational sense but with some anxiety over possible ambiguity about what spending is deemed legitimate because it is within the common agricultural provisions, and what spending outside of the common agricultural provisions but none the less on agriculture is also legitimate.
	Back in June, when we were approaching these matters under the prospective influence that the Britain would have as president of the Community, the Prime Minister said that,
	"it is also a fact that no one is saying that countries cannot take a decision to support their farming industry. The question is what should Europe be doing about the amount of money that it puts into the CAP".—[Official Report, Commons, 20/6/05; col. 533.]
	That is a clear and explicit distinction between what farming expenditure there might be on the CAP and what is outside of the CAP. I find that that comment—which seemed on the whole to be rooted in the realities of the European situation—does not sit too easily with the Minister's remarks yesterday when, at Question Time, he said:
	"Co-financing is one of the options that needs thorough discussion and must be examined as part of the review. If co-financing were to be introduced, it would have to be done in a way that ensured there was no increase in the total public spending in the EU—that is, of the EU plus the national budgets—and any move towards co-financing should also not stand in the way of further reform".—[Official Report, 9/1/06; cols. 2–3.]
	That suggests that, with one voice—the prime ministerial voice—there is a degree of independence for independent financing of agriculture; and that the voice of the Minister yesterday—and I would not dream of trying to set him against the Prime Minister—admits of another interpretation. This is of importance to us not least because of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. Romania and Bulgaria are powerful agricultural countries not merely in agricultural output but in the important social significance of agriculture.
	"Reform" is such an easygoing phrase for people secure in government and administration. However, reform often implies very substantial social changes in the rural pattern. These changes might easily be dreamed up in Brussels, but if they have to be carried out by people actually taking responsibility in Bulgaria and Romania, then we may find that we are in for periods of some difficulty and tension.
	My intervention is only to seek some elaboration from the Minister about the extent to which he sees that there will be reasonable flexibility in trying to bring about changes in agricultural spending within the common agricultural policy and within the spending that is deemed to be within the competence of national governments so that we go through the next few years with as modest a dislocation as may be feasible.

Lord Kilclooney: I rise briefly to support the Bill. It is great to see Romania and Bulgaria, after their history during the last 50 years of the previous century as part of the Soviet empire, now wishing to join the European Union as independent, democratic states. That is welcome. However, the 10 countries that acceded to the European Union in 2005 are becoming increasingly competitive with the United Kingdom for new jobs and investment. Some of their advantages vary: for example, competition from eastern Europe is caused by the fact that there are lower wage rates than in the United Kingdom.
	Secondly, there are varying corporation taxes for company profits and I wonder whether that is an additional advantage for Romania and Bulgaria over the United Kingdom in gaining new investment for the creation of new jobs in competition with the United Kingdom. If we take Romania, for example, at the moment there is major investment in industry in anticipation of its membership of the European Union, for example, in the expansion of the motor car industry. Will the United Kingdom be at a disadvantage in competition with Romania and Bulgaria as far as wage rates are concerned? There are major variations in corporation tax across the European Union. Some of our new competitors in the east are able to say that their corporation taxes are very small compared with those in the United Kingdom. Can the Minister tell us what rates of corporation tax exist in Bulgaria and Romania compared to ours in the United Kingdom. Will they, once again, have an advantage over us?
	Finally, when the 10 countries acceded to the European Union in 2005, the United Kingdom was courageous, and the Government must be congratulated, because the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and, I think, Sweden—it was certainly one of the Scandinavian countries—were the only countries that agreed to the free movement of people within the European Union. Other countries went slow on that issue. What will be the position when Romania and Bulgaria accede to membership of the European Union? Will the United Kingdom yet again agree to the free movement of people between those two countries and our country?

Lord Triesman: I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate that Clause 1 stands part. To be candid about it, I think that we have had a Second Reading debate, but, for all that, I would like to try to deal with the substantive issues that have been raised as well as the specific points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, which are very specific in relation to this stand part debate.
	First, I wholly agree with the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Howell and Lord Dykes, that the European Union is in a state of flux—I think that was the expression that was used. I am quite certain that that is for two reasons, one internal, and one external. The internal reason is obvious: the European Union has been growing in size and in the number of states involved. Making arrangements to accommodate those states and to take decisions in the larger group of states, which is an objective that we all share, has given rise to some of the flux that we have all been describing in the course of this debate. It is a function of growth. It is true that we have sought that growth, not least because it was better that countries that were formerly in the remit of dictatorships should move into democracy and the free markets that we aspire to see grow. The more growth there is, the more flux there will be, and were there to be other countries coming into the European Union, I suppose we should predict more flux. If that is the cost of growth, then it is helpful.
	I would submit that the external reason is obvious as well. That is, as World Trade Organisation arrangements have developed and as the negotiation of new trading arrangements around the world have developed, these have put pressures on the way in which the European Union as a group of trading nations operating together has had to reformulate its thinking.
	So the EU is certainly changing. As it changed, it was not surprising that an attempt was made to make constitutional provisions for the arrangements that were needed internally. We also know what the outcome of the first key decisions on those constitutional arrangements was. The French and the Dutch have rejected those arrangements. There is at the moment no constitutional arrangement being considered as a binding constitutional arrangement anywhere because there is, as it has been put, a period of reflection. I do not anticipate that that position will change very rapidly, nor is it clear to me how it could change very rapidly. It may be that Austria has aspirations as the presidency for a psychological re-launch—it may be looking for something new—but it is extremely hard, in all candour, to see how that could be a realistic prospect over the next period.
	The constitution would unquestionably not be put in its current form to those who have already rejected it. If it were not put in its current form, I would anticipate that there would be a process with major negotiation before a new form was found, and before that could be put to anybody, including the French and the Dutch, or, because there would be a referendum, to ourselves.
	The question of whether something less than that—the second option of the noble Lord, Lord Howell; a cherry-picked arrangement—would take place has also arisen in your Lordships' House when we have discussed the constitutional position. We have argued that there is no merit in simply cherry-picking. There may be one or two practical arrangements like televising and making public debates in Europe. Those are more practical and technical points, but the broader points about picking out large or substantive issues and producing a new document do not seem to me to be feasible. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that it would not be feasible by January 2007; but I cannot see it being feasible by January 2008 either.
	But, whatever the state of discussion, it will remain true that all the countries will still have to go through whatever process they have agreed to go through to agree any new arrangement—either the old constitution, a cherry-picked one or whatever it may be. They would all have to go through that. And Romania and Bulgaria would have to take their decisions as accession countries on precisely the same text and by arrangements which they would have to undertake in order to come to this, even in circumstances where there were a document, which I do not foresee. I cannot see that they would be subject to any other requirement than to go through the process of debate and decision, whether it is by referendum, by decisions of Parliaments or whatever. So, I do not think that the Clause 1 arrangements, so far as the constitution is concerned, really ought to be of such dramatic importance to us.
	Secondly, I turn to the question of full acceptance or otherwise of the acquis. I understand the argument about the extent of the documentation. I also have seen figures of somewhat short of 100,000 pages, and I also know that there are committees at work to see whether it can be slimmed down. But I wholly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. The fact is that whatever the state that has been reached at the time of the accession of these countries will be the acquis which is put to these countries. That will be what it is. If it is the whole lot because no slimming down has been done, then it will be the whole lot. Some may say that that is unfortunate or inefficient, but that is the status of the set of European laws and arrangements which will be put and will be as significant and binding on those countries as they are on the rest of us.
	On the third point, the question of the Charter of Fundamental Rights raised by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, it is true that it is not a constitutional requirement. The European Communities Act would be as binding on the two accession countries as on anyone else. I suppose that decisions of the European Court taken on the Charter of Fundamental Rights will also have a bearing. However, there again I make the essential point that the state of play—the legislative framework—to which the accession countries will be invited to accede will be exactly that in place at the time, to which all of the rest of us will also be subject.
	I turn to the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. On the budgetary arrangements, I assert that there is no change to the ceilings on accession. The effect of compression on agricultural spending will continue. The information that was provided on the arrangements for agriculture in the accession negotiations made that clear. The treaty extends the CAP to Bulgaria and Romania on a similar basis to the previous accession. Direct payments will be phased in, starting at 25 per cent of EU 15 levels in 2007 and rising to 100 per cent in 2016, with the option of national top-ups. It is also true to say that when discussions take place that may lead to further reform, as we must all hope that they will, of the common agricultural policy, those discussions and negotiations will also have their bearing.
	However, I can confirm the precise point that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made. It would be possible to go through all the sets of figures over the years to illustrate the point, but I hope that your Lordships will feel that my assertion is appropriate. Any further discussion of issues such as co-financing in the case of further reform will also apply.

Lord Howell of Guildford: We now come to two amendments to the longer and major Clause 2. I should like to use this opportunity, too, to press a number of points. This clause, to which these two amendments are related, marks quite a big change of approach by the Government from that demonstrated at the time of the previous accessions Bill and accessions Act which brought in the eight central European countries, as well, of course, as Malta and Cyprus. At that time the doctrine was that although there were opportunities to regulate and restrict free movement of people from the new member states, the British Government would not take these opportunities. Other countries were all going to do so, but the British were going to relax about the whole matter and there was going to be no question of restrictions.
	This time around regulations and restrictions are very much matters for which powers will be taken, and we can understand why. The reason is that the Government's projections of what would happen after the last accession grouping were spectacularly wrong. In 2003 the Home Office predicted that new arrivals would be in the region of between 5,000 and 13,000 a year up to 2010. Instead, in the period between May 2004 and June 2005, just over a year, some 232,000 applications were made, of which 220,000 were successful. To date there have been 292,000 entrants to the United Kingdom. For the most part, they have been extremely well absorbed. The British people have welcomed these thousands of people, many of them skilled and dedicated, thus probably adding still further to the dynamism of the British economy. But I have to say that the positive effect of this migration is more good luck rather than good policy and gives no confidence that the Government have an overall grip on the situation, or had it at the time because they clearly did not.
	This time powers are being taken regulate the flows, so the question of how will it be done arises. The indication in the other place was that the Government have not made up their mind on how to use these various powers. There might be a tighter transition period in operation. There might be worker registration which eventually, after the last fiasco, the Government found they had to move to and now have in place for workers coming from the other accession states. Alternatively, there might be a continuation or tightening of the present worker permit system. We are entitled to know the Government's thinking on this matter. The Minister in the other place said when debating this issue that the worker registration system introduced by the Government for the last group of accession states is now working fine and that,
	"we fully intend to continue the arrangements".—[Official Report, Commons, 24/11/05; col. 1715.]
	That causes one to ask whether the system to be applied under the regulations in this Bill for Bulgaria and Rumania has already been decided on. It would be useful to know, before accession takes place, how and when the Government envisage using these powers.
	I emphasise that we favour the kind of migration that has taken place when it is orderly and part of a coherent social policy. It makes sense and in the past has greatly benefited this country. But if the information is wildly out of line with what is happening, it does not inspire confidence that the exercise will be orderly or part of a coherent public policy. We want to know in this case a little more clearly how the Government will use these regulations and, indeed, their policy.
	Given that we are considering the two amendments together, we know that both Bulgaria and Rumania have been vigorously and with increasing success fighting corruption and organised crime, conditions they have inherited from the past. Indeed, sometimes I feel that we should not be quite so ready to lecture these brave countries struggling with their condition when corruption and organised crime are not exactly unknown in the existing European Union and Western Europe. But there are particular worries. We hear of human trafficking, prostitution and how Bulgaria acts as a conduit for substantial drugs movement. Indeed, only the other day the Home Secretary said that he still regarded human trafficking as a serious problem. Parliament is entitled to share the Government's assessment of the ongoing situation.
	This explains the second amendment, which would create a continuing duty—after accession and through the whole seven-year permitted transition period—for the Government to keep Parliament well informed of what is happening and developing on this front, if only to say, "Here is good material. These are able and useful people who can come to our country". It is only right that there should be a clear understanding of the size of the flow, where and how it is going to develop and how we should adjust our own social policies to match the flow of newcomers.
	I repeat, we are not in any way against what has occurred, but we want it to be well managed. I am afraid that many affairs in the European Union these days are not well managed. This is why we propose in the two amendments that there should be monitoring, a report four months before accession and regular reports every six months thereafter. I beg to move.